Chonsiu papyrus
Chonsiu – xnsw-iw
Also known as Chons-iu, Khonsuiu
Ranke I, pg. 270, 17
Acquired before 1824
Presumed to come from Saqqara
Ptolemaic Period, ca. 250 BC
Royal scribe. Wab priest of the Forecourt of the domain of Ptah. Scribe of Imhotep son of Ptah of every Second and Fourth phyle. God’s servant of Nektanebos of the Falcon of the Temple of Tehne. Scribe of the Cattle Supply of the Temple of Memphis. Scribe of the Eye of the sacrificial endowment of Ptah. For a detailed analysis of the titles, see Das Totenbuch des Chonsiu Band I page 16-17
The Book of the Dead of Chonsiu is very fragmentary and incomplete. It was probably cut to pieces to sell the individual parts to more buyers. The book can be found in its various individual parts in a total of five museums distributed in Europe. These include the British Museum in London, the Bodleian Library in Oxford and the John Rylands Library in Manchester. There is one papyrus at the archaeological museum in Zagreb, while most of the material is kept at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. However, the manuscript is far from complete. There are accumulations of fragments of various sizes and number in all the museums mentioned, which can be assembled to some extent. See the publications of Ulrike Jakobeit
For excellent research see Ulrike Jakobeit, 2015
Das_Totenbuch_des_Chonsiu_Band_I
Das_Totenbuch_des_Chonsiu_Band_II
BD AS 3856, AS 3857, AS 3858, AS 3862, AS 3866, Vienna, Ägyptisch-Orientalische Sammlung
Book of the Dead papyrus for Chonsiu aka Khonsuiu
The height of the original Book of the Dead is estimated at approx. 36 cm
BD AS 3856 length 133 cm, height 16 cm
BD AS 3857 length approx. 50 cm, height 6.5 to 8 cm
BD AS 3858 length 98 cm, height 15 cm
BD AS 3862 length 309 – 318 cm, height 19,5 – 30 cm
BD AS 3866 length 167 cm, height 37 cm
BD AS 3856, AS 3857, AS 3858, AS 3862, AS 3866, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum
Photo and panorama view VB 2022/2023 (quality remarks). For readability reasons, the panorama views have become quite large, hence loading may take a little longer
On the right AS 3866
These are the two frames on the left at the top
see Totenbuch des Priesters Chons-iu – Fine Arts Museum Vienna, Austria – CC BY-NC-SA
AS 3862 – 5 Mb
These are the two frames to the left of the middle section
This is the rightmost frame in the middle section
AS 3856
This is the rightmost frame of the panorama 4/4. The complete panorama (4 frames) is 7 Mb
The panorama view shows the bottom four frames in the exhibition
